Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Read - Wonderful Advice
Review: This book is for everyone from the novice investor to the most savvy investor. The author does a wonderful job of explaining concepts and ideas without getting caught up in a bunch of analytical data and graphs. I wish this book had been published when I was much younger. All young people justing getting started in the work world should take the time to read this book. It will definitely help you later. Definitely worth the time to read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read - Wonderful Advice
Review: This book is for everyone from the novice investor to the most savvy investor. The author does a wonderful job of explaining concepts and ideas without getting caught up in a bunch of analytical data and graphs. I wish this book had been published when I was much younger. All young people justing getting started in the work world should take the time to read this book. It will definitely help you later. Definitely worth the time to read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Great primer on building a long-term portfolio.
Review: This book is not designed for people who are trying to figure out how to make short-term profits. As the title says, this book gives you advice on building a long-term portfolio. And Bernstein stresses some main points: invest in index funds; diversify; keep costs low; rebalance regularly; tune out market noise; and stay the course.
The information in this book is generally not complicated, and there is little math involved. The content is easy to understand, even if you are a relative newcomer to investing. He does a nice job of explaining the value bias, which states great companies often don't make great stocks. He also spends a chapter on the Dividend Discount Model, which is a fairly accurate method of determining future returns. And he has a chart in the book which gives estimated returns for various asset classes for the next few decades (hint: diversify into small, value, REIT).
If you have read books by John Bogle or Larry Swedroe, you probably already know the main themes of this book. But if you have not, I would recommend this as a great way to learn about long-term investing.
Rating:
Summary: Spot-on Advice
Review: This book is right on the mark. I've purchased multiple copies and given them as gifts. And, oh, by the way, I work for a large actively-managed fund company in Boston, but my own investments are indexed wherever possible!
Rating:
Summary: Ignore 1-star reviews
Review: This book was a joy to read. The philosophy has been proven time and again to consistently beat actively managed funds over the long term. What the two reviewers who gave this tome a single star are smoking is probably listed as a controlled substance.
Rating:
Summary: Random walk theory bible
Review: This is a very interesting book, even if you do not agree on the main consept here, that the stock market are efficient and cannot be outperformed for long stretches of time (A main problem with the theory -Warren Buffett- are discarded as irrelevant). Nevertheless there are many good points presented, that high return is only possible when there is high percieved risk, not that it is new, but many interesting examples are given. The history part were also fascinating, I have never heard of the "bubble" in english canals in ninetheenth century for example.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book...
Review: This is an excellent overall investing book, and very well written. I do feel that he slightly overstates the case for efficient markets, but that is a minor criticism. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The best investing book ever, except for Bernstein's other b
Review: This is one of the two best investing books I have ever read. The other is Bernstein's Intelligent Asset Allocator.
I doubt that anything in Four Pillars is original to Bernstein. And, some of what he writes is arguable (e.g., Bernstein believes that reversion to mean is a mild force, Bogle believes it to be "profound".). But Bernstein has two gifts which make this book remarkable. He presents most of the important concepts in investing, many of which are complicated and abstruse, and explains them in a way which makes everything easy to understand for anyone with a basic knowledge of investing. He is a gifted teacher. His other gift: he is a very entertaining writer, and makes learning about investing a pleasure.
I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning the basics of investing, especially those who have yet to see the wisdom in index funds, in avoiding joining the mob in chasing past returns, in avoiding brokers, in investing intelligently in general.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for the individual investor
Review: This is truly a great book on investing for the small investor and covers all of the bases. The section on the full service broker should be revealing for the less informed investor. Bernstein falls short of telling us that there is no product offerred by the full service brokerage firm wasting your money on. The case for index fund investing and diversification is so convincing it is axiomatic that it should be followed by all investor's. I see that INTEL has fired their investment advisors and is placed the pension assets in index funds. Coverage of Exchange Traded Funds (ETF's) is too light, I guess the good Doctor is waiting for more empirical data on the tax deferral characteristics promised by ETF's. Those who do not wish to wait are directed to Gary Gastineau's book on ETF's. If I had a wish list it would be to buy a book combining Bernsteins's first two books with the beautiful prose and clarity in Frank Armstrong's Investment Strategies for the 21st Century (available on the internet for free) edited by Jonathan Clements, with a CD narrated by Suze Orman.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but overlaps with his original book.
Review: Well worth reading but much of the content will seem familiar to readers of his other book (The intelligent assset allocator)
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